Arduino boards are available from a number of outlets including group of Premier-Farnell Companies, namely, Farnell, Newark, Premier-Electronics for the MultiComp versions. Premier-Farnell took a conscious decision to offer their own version of the boards, proving that exact form-fit-function alternatives are possible to make and distribute, hence the Arduino-compatible boards from 'MultiComp' , including the Duemilanove (MC-Nove), Mega (MC-Mega) and Nano (MC-Nano). The popularity of the 3 boards mentioned above is easy to understand when one sees the number of projects being based upon them

For the sake of a couple of quid, I'd rather get the real thing and have my money go to the people who got it all started.

Can't help agreeing with you there.

Obviously, there's nothing "wrong" with what Farnell are doing here. But I prefer to see open-source used as an enabler for people to produce boards with some unique qualities; not just to clone someone else's work and undercut them.

Edit: Except, I guess, in situations where a bigger company is able to sell an idea at a massively cheaper price - which is good for consumers. Undercutting by £2 is a bit odd.

(actually, there's never been any confirmation or denial that Premier-Farnell hasn't reached some sort of mutually beneficial agreement with the Arduino team/etc. Such things are occasionally confidential, and even some cases where some such arrangement has been made it doesn't seem to get widely publicized... It makes it difficult for the end consumer to make ethics-based choices, though...)